


the world is still round, my compass is true; each step is a step back to you

by Dialux



Series: dry your eyes and give me your hand [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Endgame, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, i think this might be one of the most angsty things i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 23:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12046263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: It takes Jon some time to realize- because he’s a fool in some aspects, and too absorbed in his own thoughts in other aspects- but he does, eventually. Sansa calls him Jon, calls him what she’s always called him, but there’s none of the warmth that had been there before.(There’s no coldness either, but then- Sansa’s dispassion has always been more hurtful than her anger.)[Endgame fic, where Jon goes south and he returns to Sansa only after the Long Night. Trust isn’t easily built after all that’s happened, but Jon and Sansa manage it well enough.]





	the world is still round, my compass is true; each step is a step back to you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittlestardustcaught](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlestardustcaught/gifts).



> I talked a bit too much on tumblr, and alittlestardustcaught was a terrible enabler, so I guess we're here now? With endgame fic?

"Welcome home,” Sansa says.

She bows, as deep as ever, and she has all of Winterfell surrounding her- the people that survived the Long Night, the men who’d fought beside Jon, the women who’d fought beside her. It’s as grand a welcome as has ever been given to a king inside Winterfell, for all that Jon is no longer a king.

But- she doesn’t say anything more than that.

 _She would’ve,_ he thinks, limbs still aching from the cold.  _Once- she would’ve._

When Jon still thought the deepest scars Ramsay had left on her were of blood. Before Jon swore to protect her, heart in his throat and rage in his heart. Before he failed, failed as he seems to have done in everything he’s ever attempted all his life.

Things have changed, now.

Sansa bows, and she rises, and she leads him inside; there’s a feast set out in the hall- foods he’s missed, over the previous months. But Sansa doesn’t stay for long, and her departure is so quiet it takes Jon a long time to realize.

“Where- where’d she go?”

“Who?” Tormund asks, laughing, ale steadily dripping down his beard.

It’s not been even a scarce hour but he already feels tipsy, and Jon knows that if he stays he’ll only get worse.

“Sansa,” Jon says, forcing his voice even.

“To her solar, like as not. Lady never sleeps, far as I’ve seen her-” Tormund trips over his tongue, slurring the last of his sentence until it’s an unintelligible mush of a mess. “-would’a been nice,” he finishes, flourishing his hands grandly.

“Drunk,” Jon mutters under his breath, dodging Tormund’s perfectly-placed elbow with a lurch that makes his head ache. “I’ll see you in the morning. Try not to drown in ale by then.”

“I’ll still beat you upside the head in the yard,” Tormund replies, and winks, steadier than the drunkard has any right to be.

Jon takes his playful shove to the side, stumbles and falls almost to his knees; he catches himself before he does, though, and ends up wandering out of the hall. There’s a half-formed thought in his mind, to go and talk to Sansa, but he doesn’t see a light in her solar, and- it all seems to catch up to him all of a sudden- his battles, his loves, his hatreds, his rages- and he’s home, he’s in  _Winterfell_ again, and everything else feels very small, very unimportant.

He barely reaches his rooms before the exhaustion catches up to him.

For the first night in months, Jon doesn’t dream.

…

He visits her the next morning, before she has time to leave her chambers. It’s what they used to do before he went south; though then it was Sansa who came to him, Sansa who advised him with the sharp words he’d never quite been able to swallow or let slide or-

Or do anything, really, other than return it, word for word, accusation for accusation, until they both felt too twisted-up, too gnarled, to continue.

And then dawn would rise again, and they’d start it all over.

Jon feels too tired to do all that now. He’d rather just sit, and speak, and- and after that, he’s not quite sure, but he’ll take it as it comes.

He doesn’t hesitate, to knock on her chamber doors. There’s a twinge of warning when she doesn’t answer immediately, but the door does swing open eventually, revealing Sansa: fully dressed, eyes cool and collected, face closed as ever.

“Jon,” she says.

She doesn’t say it as if it were a surprise, or as if she doesn’t want him there, or even as if she’s angry. It’s calm, instead, and flat, and even. Jon feels utterly wrong-footed.

“I thought- we should- talk.” He hesitates. “There’s a lot to speak of, at least.”

“Yes,” says Sansa. Her voice doesn’t shift at all. “There is. Tonight, perhaps?”

He blinks, even more thrown. Jon had thought she might avoid him, but Sansa doesn’t look any different than she’d done before. Jon had thought she might be angry at him, but Sansa looks as calm as ever. Jon had thought she might never forgive him for his sins, but Sansa doesn’t look as if she even remembers any of them.

“Yes,” he says. “Tonight.”

…

He observes her during the day.

Sansa smiles at the other lords, but she never laughs. She barely eats in front of them, but there’s a tray of hot tea and toast in her solar; a cup of wine and some stew in her chambers. When she speaks, the people don’t listen as closely as they’d done to him, but they do treat her with more kindness.

Her decisions- her rulings- aren’t Jon’s own. They’re too merciless in some actions, and too merciful in others, and he finds himself biting his tongue raw for the full afternoon when she opens Winterfell’s doors to the smallfolk’s grievances.

 _Did she feel this way?_ he wonders.  _When I sat there, on that throne- did she ever bite her cheek until it bled?_

Jon well knows the answer.

…

It takes Jon some time to realize- because he’s a fool in some aspects, and too absorbed in his own thoughts in other aspects- but he does, eventually. Sansa calls him Jon, calls him what she’s always called him, but there’s none of the warmth that had been there before.

(There’s no coldness either, but then- Sansa’s dispassion has always been more hurtful than her anger.)

…

They meet after supper, but where Jon had thought they’d meet in her chambers, they go instead to her solar. It’s dark, and cold; Sansa doesn’t bother to light any fire, and only seats herself.

“You wanted to speak to me.”

“I- yes,” says Jon. “I thought- you’d want to talk. And that I should… I don’t know. Apologize?”

Sansa doesn’t respond. When she does, it’s only a long, slow blink.

“The people you owe your apologies to are dead,” she says, finally. “You certainly don’t owe any such to me.”

He checks himself, startled. “Sansa-”

“Is that all?”

 _“No,”_ says Jon, sharply. “It’s not. There’s a lot that’s happened in Winterfell while I was gone, and I think we should  _talk_ about some of it-”

“There’s a lot that’s happened in Westeros as well,” says Sansa. “Winterfell must feel very small after seeing all that. Anyhow, I think you know all the salient details.”

“You killed Littlefinger.”

_An accusation?_

Jon doesn’t know. It certainly feels like one, though he hadn’t exactly meant it to be one.

Sansa must feel the same- she straightens, her hair a dark swirl around her face; she looks older, colder, and though she’s still made of shadow and bone, bolder.

“Yes.”

“Bran,” says Jon, quietly, and he knows he doesn’t imagine the way Sansa’s pale hands tighten into fists. They’re treading dangerous territory now, but he can’t find it in himself to stop. “Arya.”

“What of them?” Sansa asks, voice a cut of steel and stone and snow. 

“They died.” Jon doesn’t say the next words out loud, but Sansa hears them nonetheless:  _you let them die._

These aren’t just accusations, not any longer; these are arrows, made of wind and fashioned to pierce their armor. They won’t ever be able to walk away from this.

He still cannot get his feet to move.

He still cannot keep quiet.

Gods  _damn_ him to the deepest hell, but he cannot look away from Sansa either, can only see the way she straightens further, impossibly lovely, improbably strong-

“They came home.”  _And I did not,_ Jon thinks, bitter and brutal. “They asked after you,” Sansa continues, and now she doesn’t sound the slightest bit shaken by his accusations, by his anger. “I’m not sure what else there is to be spoken of them.”

“They’re your  _sister,”_ Jon bites out. “Your sister, your brother, the last of your family- don’t you care? At least a little?”

“They were,” Sansa says, and swallows, the roll of her throat gentle against the sharp angles of her face. “They were the last of my family. And now I am the last, the last of the Starks, and I find speaking of the dead a fruitless task for if I began it I’d never be able to stop. So  _no,_ to answer you: if you name my words a measure of my love, then I am afraid I no longer love anything but the North.”

She rises and moves to the door only to pause, hand braced on the handle.

“If you find being in my presence an insurmountable task- I would not stop you from leaving.”

Then she leaves, and Jon is left alone in a darkened solar, his nails bloody on the insides of his palms and an aching scream caught in his throat.

_I am not a Targaryen. I am not a Stark. I belong in neither the south nor the north. I am a bastard, fit only for shadows, fit only for scraps-_

He slams the door so hard the wood shakes, but it does nothing to dampen his rage as he strides towards his chambers.

…

“I’ll ready a horse for you,” Sansa says, over breakfast, hand spreading preserves over her bread. It’s quite the picturesque sight: the sunlight slants in through the high windows, catching on her hair, her hands; the glass jar of the preserves throws little rainbows across the table. “You can leave whenever you wish it.”

“I’m not leaving,” Jon replies brusquely.

Sansa doesn’t move for a long moment. Then she says, “Jon.”

“I’m not  _leaving,”_ he replies, and stands, and walks out, bile thick in his throat.

He’s not fleeing. He’s  _not._

…

They don’t avoid each other, but that’s more because Sansa seems to be involved in everything inside of Winterfell than that Jon actively seeks her out. Instead, they settle into a nice sort of a rhythm: Jon spends his mornings in the yard, training all the boys and sparring with those who can match him, while Sansa meets with the lords; they eat their lunch in the large hall- or, rather, Jon eats, while Sansa picks at her food- and then Sansa opens the doors to the smallfolk; after sundown, she disappears to write letters and maintain the North, while Jon broods in his rooms.

…

It’s only when Tormund drags him to a council meeting that he realizes: he’s seen Sansa deal with the smallfolk, seen her smirk with the lords in public; but he’s never seen her wrestle with them in private.

(Jon had kept things open, when he still had a crown on his head. He’d spoken in public, listened to their assent, listened to their dissent; he’d taken his decisions there, then, done in front of them.

Sansa does it differently.)

She doesn’t notice him at first- she’s too busy frowning at Lord Manderly- but when she does, Sansa’s face goes blank.

That- hurts.

Jon looks away to stop himself from saying anything worse than what he’s already done. Gods only knew how long it would take Sansa to kick him out of Winterfell; and it isn’t as if he has many more places he can go to.

“I understand your worries, Lord Manderly,” Sansa says. “But there’s nothing more I can do right now. The ships aren’t under my control.”

“They’re taking up too much of my harbor,” he growls back. “Lowering prices- gods know what kind of fish they grow in Sothoryos, to sell them at a quarter what we sell at home! They’re undercutting all my markets, and it wouldn’a have started if it weren’t for  _your_ single boat-”

“I did not know that Sothoryan sailors consider an invitation to one an invitation to all,” Sansa says irritably.

“And yet!” he barks. “They’re  _in my harbor_ as we speak! If it weren’t for your one-handed fool and lady knight I might have had peace for a gods-bedamned year. Look at the Karhold, they’re all-”

Manderly’s words fade into white noise as Jon stares at Sansa.

“Wait,” he says.

Manderly pauses, turning to glare at him, before he realizes who’s doing the speaking.

“Sansa,” says Jon.

She doesn’t look up for a long heartbeat. When she does, her eyes are very blue, very level, very sharp. “Yes?”

“No,” he breathes. “Tell me you did not- tell me you did  _not-_ you weren’t foolish enough to-”

“Is there something you wish to say?” Her eyes go colder, flatter, fish-eyes’ on a dead woman’s face.

“You did  _not_ knowingly commit treason,” Jon tells her.

“We’re done here,” Sansa snaps, surging to her feet. “Follow me,” she tells him, and walks out of the room so fast he feels the breeze of her departure tug at his jerkin. 

They enter her solar, and he cannot keep silent any longer.

“I will not- I will _not- I will not-”_

“What will you not do?” Sansa demands, suddenly, abruptly, loud. “You will not look away from the one kindness I was able to give the best woman I’ve ever known? You will not accept that I did something your queen would have disapproved of? You will not-”

“-she is  _your_ queen as well-”

“-not so much as yours,” Sansa says, and though the words themselves are innocent enough, the insinuation slotted through the syllables is ugly, is rife with something hot and twisting and terrible.

Jon recoils.

There’s regret in her eyes, he thinks, but not repentance.

“What do you want me to say?” he asks quietly.

“What is there left to say?” Sansa’s lips thin. “I don’t want your words, Jon. You made your choices. And I don’t pretend to know- to understand- why you’re here. You cannot look me in the eye, you walk around Winterfell as if someone were holding a sword to your throat, you snap at all those who cross your path- you’re unhappy to be here, but when I tell you to leave you refuse.”

She seats herself behind the desk. The light flares from behind her, glowing, brilliant, and for just a heartbeat she looks like all the ghosts that he holds in his heart: like Catelyn and Ygritte and Robb and Bran and Rickon and Arya and Ned and Lyanna and-

And all the rest.

 _If I begin, I will never stop,_ Jon thinks. This is the grief that they carry, the both of them: endless, eternal, the kind to swallow stars and outlast the most deathless things. Sansa- she’d known this, before. She’d understood it, before he ever considered it.

“Go home,” Sansa tells him, gently. “To your dragon queen in the south. To where you are happy.”

“And you?” Jon advances one step towards her.

Something low in his chest twists, when Sansa blinks as if thrown- as if Jon thinking of her was such a surprise. Maybe it’s that, in the end, that makes him spit out the words; Sansa’s coldness, Sansa’s dignity, Sansa’s steadfast attempts to drive him away. 

“Would you be happy, then?” he demands, low and fierce. “Would you be happy if I left?”

 _Say the words,_ Jon thinks.  _Say them. I will leave. I will-_

“I would rather one of us be happy than none,” she says. Sansa- she says it simply, as if it were one of the only truths she knows. 

Then the impact of the statement hits.

 _One,_ Jon thinks, staring at her.  _None._

Sansa isn’t happy, and neither is he, but she’s willing to send him back south- back south, with the information of her treason on his lips, to a woman who’s never liked Sansa all that much.

All for  _him._

“I cannot,” he says abruptly. “I will not, but more importantly: I cannot.”

She frowns. “Whyever-”

“Winterfell is my home,” Jon says, firmly, as steadily as he can manage. “Whatever else- this is my home.”

“Yes,” Sansa murmurs. “But, Jon-”

“I could not be a Targaryen for Daenerys,” he tells her. The words rise in his throat like a tide, like a wave, like a cry for war. “That’s what she wanted from me. That’s why I- that’s why I left. That’s why I’ll never go back.” Jon steps forwards, seizes her hand, drops to his knees. “That’s  _why_ I would- come back. To swear to you. To stand by your side. To protect you.” He pauses. “If you would wish to send me away. If you want that. If that would make you more content. I would not pause for a moment.”

Sansa doesn’t answer, not for long, terrible heartbeats; but her hand closes around his, fingers slotting through his with an old instinct. And then, suddenly, she deflates, every muscle in her body loosening as if a string had come undone.

Through the shine of sunlight, Jon sees her face. She looks as if she might cry.

“No more vows,” she says, in a voice smaller than he’s heard in near a decade. “Please.”

“Sansa-”

“No more. Arya swore to keep us safe, and she died in those snows. Bran swore to an all-seeing duty, and he died fighting the Night’s King.” She shakes her head. “I am  _tired,_  of swearing vows and breaking vows and swearing them anew. Better to do what you can. Better to spend your life trying, and die knowing that; rather than trying, and lamenting all you could not do. No more  _vows,_ Jon.”

He drops his head to her palm, and then, after a moment, she turns, so he’s settled against her knees; Jon exhales, and she brings her hands around him, and they stay like that for near the rest of the afternoon, entwined as two wolves in the spring, two wolves yet caught in the memory of winter.

…

“You are a Stark,” Sansa says, hours later. He laughs, shortly, and she tips his head up. “Not just to me. You were raised by Eddard Stark, Jon Snow: and I know my father. He raised you, and he loved you, deep as he ever loved Robb or I or any of the others. You were a Stark to him. You were a Stark to us all.” She smiles, and it reaches her eyes, and it’s in that warmth that he feels like spring has finally come.

It’s in her smile that the chill in Jon’s bones finally fades.

“You  _are_ a Stark to us all,” Sansa says, inexorable, implacable, unstoppable.

…

That night, Sansa leads him to her chambers. They lie together, her in her sleep-shift, him in his shirt; skin to skin, limbs tangled and warm and together. It’s not for love at first, he thinks; there’s too much that yet lies unsaid between them.

But comfort grows into love, as a flower’s winter-frozen petals bloom anew, when the ice melts.

…

Jon had loved Ygritte with a boy’s love, with the burden of a man’s duty on his shoulders- he’d lost her, in the end, to that duty. Jon had loved Daenerys with a man’s love, with the burden of a king’s duty on his shoulders- and he’d lost her, eventually, to the things he could not give.

Jon had, once, loved Sansa with a brother’s love.

He loves her, now, with the love of a man for a woman. He loves her, and there’s nothing of duty, nothing of burdens between each other.

(There’s grief, and loss, and pain, shadowed and aching; but these aren’t half so weighty as vows. Jon knows this.

Implicitly.)

…

“Stay because you want to,” Sansa tells him, one night. “Stay because that is your wish. Not for what you owe me. Not for what you owe everyone else. Because of  _you.”_

She means,  _Be selfish._ She means,  _Choose me._ She means,  _I love you._

“When I left the Red Keep,” Jon tells her, hand warm on her hair, unbraided and loose about her face- “when I rode North. I didn’t think about Winterfell, Sansa. When I thought of where to go, I didn’t think about Winterfell at all.”

He’d thought of red hair and eyes to outshine the sky. He’d thought of Sansa, before he ever remembered Winterfell’s walls, and now he’s in her bed, and now he loves her, and now, she knows it.

 _He_ knows it.

“I came home,” Jon whispers. 

“Yes,” Sansa replies. “To Winterfell.”

“To  _you,”_ he answers, fingers light along the half-moon crescents of her eyes, palm rolling against the knobs of her spine, face slotted into the swan-smooth curve of her neck. “To you, Sansa.”

…

(Their first kiss: almost an accident, one Jon might have believed if not for the way one side of her mouth kicked up, the same angle Jon had once learned from Ygritte, the same angle Sansa must have learned from him: to smile crooked, to smile sharp, to smile sly.

He kisses her back, hard, deep, and she tastes of honey and lavender- but what Jon remembers best is her laugh.

That’s a sound that’s been Sansa’s, Sansa’s alone, from birth.)

…

They are a hundred ghosts, caught in their own skins: Jon moves too much like Robb, and Sansa’s disdain looks like a mirror of Arya’s, and the smallfolk whisper of their similarity to the previous Lord and Lady Stark.

These, he knows, all too well, are not compliments.

…

It takes them years to unlearn the sound of their dead.

It takes them years, but the sound of the living outweighs the sound of the dead, if not soon enough- then- eventually.

…

Jon swears no vows to Sansa, and she never swears any to him, but the halls of Winterfell ring with the screams of children named Stark; the North knows the gentle hand of Sansa’s rule and Jon’s rougher sword; they walk together, sleep together, wake together, and when they breathe, their chests are warm and alive.

They make it, slowly, steadily, formed one aching step after aching step: a world, a life.

A world, and a life, for each other.


End file.
